Still Here

There no reasons for me to excuse our absence from the blog since May. And I’m not going to, I am instead going to offer some reasons in brief.

We haven’t really done much all summer. Amanda has used Moho once for a one night stopover in a place called Pool Bridge out on Exmoor, and I think we stayed one night on our friends drive earlier this summer for a party.

And that is the extent of our moho travels this summer. The reasons for this have been mostly financial, we’ve been skint `again’, due to the difficulty I had getting a job locally (I really did think with my background in the city that I’d fall into job, how wrong I was).

I worked a literal, three back breaking months in a garden centre, Wyevale Group as a wage slave. My opinion of Wyevale is such that I will never spend a penny in one of their premises ever again. If you haven’t worked in retail on minimum wage, then you cannot possibly understand why the working poor exist, and like me prior to the experience, you probably think the working poor are poor because they can’t be arsed to do better. How wrong that perception is.

 

I’ll have moments digression on their behalf. You came into work in a recession, you did two years college or maybe even university. At the two year point you had to get a vocational placement or your studies couldn’t continue. There was a recession, there were no placements available, you had no income to support yourself and you couldn’t continue with your studies, so you took on a job, any job just to stay afloat. And three, four, five years later you’re still there. Because you only earn £6.50 an hour, some weeks you only get your minimum hours (circa 16 so the company doesn’t have a National Insurance bill), and if things are really slow you get banked. I can’t imagine how tough it is in zero hours where a guaranteed 16 hours would be manna from heaven. Now the economy is in growth, you can’t get further borrowing because you don’t earn enough and or don't have a guaranteed level of income and or you’re excluded because modern apprenticeships pay less than half of minimum wage https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage/who-gets-the-minimum-wage for the first year of the apprenticeship (read all about it from the link). 

Paraphrase the above, for those that were made redundant because of the recession. And then find a percentage of people with moderate learning difficulties to tick the disability box, and some lovely old ladies earning pin money (though it’s nowhere near as nice as it was when it was an independent, and they’ve made us all change our hours or we’ll be out of a job, and I only used to come in for a bit to help with my pension and some company/banter since I retired from full-time work ...), and you have a garden centre. And sitting on top of this festering exploitation dung heap you have a board of directors http://www.wyevalegardencentres.co.uk/about-us/board-of-directors all wanking their egos trying to grow a business (using the homogensing one size fits all stack em high sell em cheap technique ... well not really cheap, well in actual fact really quite expensive) all on the backs of some of the most unfortunate people I have ever worked with or known in work.

Having been through this particular whringer for a few months, having been taken on permanently (allegedly), only to find out when my contract arrived that the centre manager decided to change the terms of the employment offer after the fact; to a seasonal role (yup an absolute and total disregard for the terms of offer of employment or contract ... if you don’t like it you can always leave). I have joined a small IBM outfit a mile from home. As they are my current employer I am going to be expedient with my feelings about the overall conditions and the working environment. But I will say, IBM has some way to go before it meets it’s own expectations of itself. It is better than than the garden centre by many country miles, but I think it falls way short of the standards IBM touts on its corporate website.

Back to the main thrust, though I think I may have hijacked myself above. In the absence of travel, we have concentrated on getting back in the black and then skidding along the black, doing jobs that required very little money, like digging gardens and stripping walls, all stuff we have blogged before and had no intention of boring people with again, but in another house.

Today as I write, I’ve been at IBM for three months and a bit, Amanda has been at a Solicitors in Bridgwater for six months. I’ve spent twelve of fourteen weeks decorating the hall and stairs (proper money helps with these projects). We couldn’t get finance together for a skim, so I did a lot of fill and paint, fill and paint, so much so that I have tennis elbow, which I can assure the reader is a proper aggravation and very painful  when it wants to be. I’ve 90% finished the back bedroom, we just need to find some nice curtains and hang some pictures. Three weeks ago we had a multi fuel stove installed this was the one really big ticket item we wanted done before the winter. It only took two days to install, but in a mid-terrace house without a chimney breast of any description in the original build, things get a little complicated and quite expensive (though not prohibitively so).

I’ll post some pictures of the process another day, I will also post some pictures of the odds and end we have done this year, a montage. I’m aware that I’ve made the year sound terrible, but the truth is as I sit and scribble,that aside from the decorating, we have in no particular order been:

Back to Kilve, to Tarr Steps, Salcombe for the fireworks, out murmuration hunting on Shapwick Heath, up Burrow Mump, dug a pond, planted a tonne of plants rescued from the garden centre skip, up West Quantocks head, Yomped around an ancient lead mine in Shropshire, visited Iron Bridge, walking on our local beach, out around the confluence of the three river mouths on our doorstep and a load of other stuff that escapes my mind, and the year isn’t over just yet.

So that’s that, the Twitter feed down the side proves we’re alive. And hopefully we’ll be back on the bounce next year when projects drop below £500 a month, and can be done in the evenings, leaving those important weekends free. 

Porlock Weir

Last week on my birthday we went to Porlock Weir. It's a small fishing village just down the coast from us (about an hour if you get caught behind a tractor trimming the verges). Weir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porlock_Weir.

 

Tiny really tiny.

The weather was fantastic, the drive superb in the Alfa with the roof down, heading west along the A39 coast road. The place itself like many of the northern coastal towns of the southwest, almost entirely isolated end of the road destinations. That may sound obvious, but in the context of many of the southern coastal towns, there is a road in one side and out the other. Along the north, there is a road in that is the road out, hanging off the A39 like a tendril, and very often those roads are little more than farm tracks. The north coast of southwest is very different to the south coast of the southwest.

 

The road in and out

Birthday day out ... birthday suit, there is a story behind this.

You can make all the buildings disappear by walking to the waters edge.

We didn't do much while we were there, a short walk (me knackered from work the day before, Amanda still having knee problems), a quick scoot round www.exmoorglass.co.uk (superb handmade glassware) and a pint before a civilised drive home.

Sheltered Bay (sort of)

Coast path yonder (campsite over there, we will be going back asap).

A bit more wibble.

It feels like we haven't done much in months, however the photographic record begs to differ. The issue (if there is one) is that I haven't been writing anything other than cover letters and doing more CV tailoring, and in-between times working some very odd days at the garden centre. There are a couple of things to know about this: 1. it's the most exhausting thing I've ever done to make money (and I spent three weeks hodding bricks once when I was made redundant). 2. It takes a day at least to recover from working for two days, mentally and physically (defined as so physically exhausted the brain just can't function at a higher level, this isn't to say that the job isn't enjoyable in its basic form, but it leaves little time for us and our shenanigans ). 3. I'm in project mode and need to earn some more money and get my `every other weekend' back so Amanda and I can do stuff together.

Sarah Harrisons' Hawaiian Themed Birthday Party (before it got all drunken and silly :-) )

Aside from this we've been putting all our data stuff up into the cloud. it's taken since the 9th of March until maybe seven days ago to get the basics done. Primarily because BT only guarantee download speed not upload speed. So shifting 229gb of data when upload is 0mbps (yes zero megabits per second), tends to add an overhead. And despite complaints about the service from all quarters BT are quite content to offer platitudes and take your money ... and laugh in your face.

Waveney Down

BARB Burnham on Sea rescue 

St Audries Bay waterfall

We've been to Cyprus for 12 nights but we really didn't do much apart from drinking like teenagers, and sharing some time with a group of our friends from the UK, it's been a while since we all amassed in one place for a jolly, and a grand time was had by all.

Kilve Beach

The North Jurrassic Coast ...Triassic as well and much in between

Moho is currently off the road with a damaged CV gaiter and brake line (which I can tell you was very exciting for the few seconds it took me to realise that I couldn't stop the van while trying to pull out of our turning). But this has inconvenienced us little as Amanda has a new toy, to whit an Alfa (not Alpha ... I tweeted it wrong and haven't heard the last of it) Romeo Spyder.

Moho's new chum

So that's us for now. coasting without a plan, other than for the garden. Back to being skint again ... I think on balance we are pretty shit with money and live in the now. Though if you were to ask me I'd say I'm careful and considered, reality appears to make me at worst a fibber and at best delusional.
Here's a few pics from the last few weeks.

Kilve Beach

Balancing Rocks

A Buzzard

Super Spring Tide

Clifton Suspension Bridge

The Hiatus Mitigation Wibble

It’s been a while since I wrote ... it isn’t like I haven’t had time on my hands. However looking for a job has pretty much been the priority, and so yes I have written, for hours on end: cover letters, application forms and CV tailoring. All to nought it seems. And by the time I’ve finished that sort of brain draining stuff I’ve not had anything creative left to say that wouldn’t be a string of expletives describing recruiters and recruitment agencies.

Technically I’ve been messing about with cloud storage, and moving our thousands of pictures and video, plus every word I’ve written on to Onedrive, (this is a terabyte for £5.99 per month, of which currently we need to use 200gb, therefore paying £9.99 to Google for 2tb wasn’t good value for money. And especially so when you consider your free 15gb, that you can use just for blog stuff via Picasa ... see there is a nerd in me still). It’s an ongoing project despite having unlimited broadband. There is a bottleneck, and it’s our now `old’ laptop.

Moving swiftly on, and to cut a long story very short, I have a job at last. It came via our next door neighbours visit to our local garden centre. It could almost be my perfect role.; Plantsman in a garden centre, cycling distance from home. The money is scrape by, but enough when pooled with Amanda’s. The hours vary week to week but there is always a minimum, and I have a qualification that is actually relevant and the opportunity to expand the skill-set in that area.

Fascinating for me was the fact that when I asked the interviewer why the job hadn’t been advertised on recruitment sites, they said it was pointless exercise that had a cost for almost no benefit whatsoever. The much discussed `recruitment black-hole’ described so often on Linkedin is tangible on both sides of the recruitment divide. I actually took the time one very grumpy afternoon to write to a recruiters CEO, to complain that after three weeks of conversations and hours of research regarding a project engineers role installing automated pharmaceutical dispensaries, that I had been left high and dry by the consultant dealing with the client. About an hour later I got a phone call from that agency apologising for the lack of communication, and that the company looking for project engineers had decided a different approach was required. Why it took a grumpy letter to be told the truth is beyond me. There is very little integrity at the sharp end of recruitment.

Amanda also has a new job that provides proper job security and benefits after almost a year of contracting for a quango. Things are looking up ... he says tentatively.

But Amanda has also been on the sore end of recruiter shenanigans, trying to keep her in place in a role she is sick to the back teeth with. While trying to explain to the recruiters client that Amanda has to serve a notice period way in excess of the courtesy period required for a contractor (five days). Anecdotally it also appears as if Amanda’s new employer has suffered the rigours of the recruitment bandits playing both ends against the middle. So for all our hours of letter writing, CV tailoring and follow ups over months, I’ve bagged a job by word of mouth, based on a neighbours random visit to a garden centre looking for a funky flower pot (absolute truth). And Amanda has (unwillingly but at my behest) pushed back at the agency hard to allow her (what is effectively her employee right) to give a weeks notice. So that she can at least get a feel for the new role before we travel to Cyprus.

Looking on the positive side of these changes; it is quite liberating, to be able to contribute financially at home again on a regular basis, not just blocks of finite cash earned by spending weeks away at a time in London and the surrounds living out of a back pack. It’s pleasant to be able to go and do my hours (that literally race by) and then have all this other time (now I have my head in the right place), to write, to look after house and home, do lots of cooking etc. Of course a Premium Bonds or Lottery Jackpot win wouldn’t go amiss. But after the other 70 million people in the UK wishing for this concession from the fates, I’m sure I’d be first in the queue.

Aside from all the job hunting and settling into new routines, we have been out and about at the weekends, fossil hunting, yomping and being agog at what a fabulous country this one is. The bike is finally out of the shed after an entire winter without a single use (be ashamed, be very ashamed G). We are swimming twice a week, though we’d like to do more. And we have hundreds of new pictures from our wanders to post. However, remember techno bottleneck above? Well it’s genuinely holding things in abeyance. Before I can really get back on top of pictures and words I need to sort out the groundwork. And it’s at time like this, I can only put my hands together and say a little thank you to the vastness of the cosmos, that I have an IT background, because If I didn’t I really wouldn’t know where to start.

So without further ado, I’ll bid you adieu, because I need to link our external storage drive as our Cloud Folder, for the final big synch, spec out a new PC with wireless to be our central server, format this laptop and rebuild it from scratch as a: typing while sitting in the comfy chair machine (did I mention I bought a second hand MAN chair ... it’s wicked). Drop the Onedrive app on our phones and tablet and then set up the synch settings to ensure, local deletions don’t affect cloud data. And then find a relatively convenient way to get files from Onedrive to Blogger, sure in the knowledge that someone somewhere is making sure all our precious data is multiply redundant on many servers ... as well as on our 2tb external unit.